Notes on Domesday

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NOTES ON DOMESDAY

BY THE

REV. R. W. EYTON, M.A.

REPRINTED FROM THE

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1877.

By Permission,

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X LONDON:'

REEVES & TUENEE, 196, STEAND.
BRISTOL: T. KERSLAKE & CO.

1880.

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#• <£v/zt$:3z

LONDON : BOWDEN, HUDSON AND CO., PRINTERS,
23, RED LION STREET, HOLBORN.

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NOTES ON DOMESDAY.

England has now, for nearly eight centuries, been
possessed of a Territorial Record, such as no later
age nor other country has conceived, accomplished, and
preserved. A notice of Domesday generally, familiar-
ising by some newer lights that august monument, may
well be among the first contributions to a County
Journal of Archaeology.

Domesday is not merely venerable from its own great
antiquity and structural grandeur, but, as preserving
fragments of records much older than itself, it adds
both facts and tests to the historic matter of a still
remoter age.

The business of the King's " Legati," as the Domes-
day Commissioners somewhere styled themselves, has
been represented as one of extraordinary difficulty, in
that they had to deal with the remotest corners of a
kingdom newly conquered and imperfectly settled.
This view is hardly full enough. Where such difficul-
ties were paramount, as was the case with Northum-
berland, Durham, and most part of Westmoreland, no
survey was attempted : where such difficulties were not
quite so great, as was the case with part of Westmore-
land, with North Yorkshire, with Lancashire, and with
Monmouthshire, the survey was proportionally incom-
plete. As to Cumberland, it was omitted of course,
not because it was Unsettled, but because it was not as
yet conquered, nor attempted to be conquered, by the
Normans. As to Welsh Territory, on the other hand,
so far as it had been annexed to adjacent English Coun-
ties, such annexations were duly noted by the Domesday
Commissioners,

NOTES ON DOMESDAY.

And the then recent conquest of England was in fact
rather a correlative than a hindrance of the projected
survey ; for the survey was not merely the conception
of a great genius, nor the exercise of an impetuous will,
but it implied a competence of actual power seldom
attained by Despots, save at the noontide of a daring
and successful career. No such work has been possible
to any later Monarch than William I. ; for none but he
has had the combined faculties and opportunities ade-
quate to the enterprise ; none has had such superiority
over the greater vassals of the Crown ; none, perhaps,
has had such a choice of Ministerial instruments. To
illustrate these remarks, we would point out that Domes-
day surveys three Counties which, to all appearance,
involved a Palatine jurisdiction. These Counties were
Cheshire, Shropshire, and Cornwall. William's Com-
missioners dealt with these Counties as with others.
Yet, so long as they remained Palatinate, not one of
these Counties will have been approachable by any
Royal Commission, acting under Patent, as was the case
with the Domesday Legati.

• In addition to the great inquisitorial powers with
which the Domesday Commissioners were backed, we
should here note another facility which attended them.
They seem to have had at their command Territorial
Records, more or less full and exact, of several periods
of the Confessor's reign, if not of still earlier date. We
may judge how far the Commissioners may have been
aided in their task by a plurality of such antecedent
Records, if we examine the only relic of this kind
which has, in its original form, been preserved to us.
This priceless document is a Danegeld-assessment-roll
of the South- Western Counties. The true and authentic
title of this Record is "Inquisicio Gheldi." Because
the place of its custody has happened for centuries to
have been the same with that of the Exon Domesday,
and because the older Record Commission caused it to
be printed and bound up with the Exon Domesday, this
Inquest is usually spoken of and quoted as part of the

NOTES ON DOMESDAY. 3

Exon Domesday. Nothing can be more erroneous,
nothing more suggestive of further error. The Inquest
is two years older than any Domesday.

A minute examination of this Inquest suggests that
it was used, though not implicitly followed, by the
Dome3day Commission which afterwards visited the five
Counties in question. Its date and nature, therefore,
demand our immediate attention.

Between the Conquest and the date of Domesday,
William levied the tax, called Danegeld, more than
once. He levied it as a War-tax. One of the chroni-
clers says, that after Christmas, 1083, King William
levied a tax of 6 shillings on every hide of land. This
was the Gheld in question, and the Roll which we have
remaining is the collectors' account of this levy in the
South- Western Counties.

The Eoll itself contains some internal evidence of the
date and rate above assigned. It was levied after the
death of Queen Matilda (this event took place Nov. 3,
1083). It was levied before Domesday, which marks a
few intermediate changes of tenure (Domesday was com-
pleted before Easter, April 5, 1086). Its last arrears
were paid up after the Easter of some year when Easter
and Lady-Day nearly coincided. Such a year was 1084,
when Easter fell on March 31 : such a vear was not 1085,
when Easter fell on April 20.

The date of the Inquisicio Gheldi was therefore the
first three months of 1084, and it was assessed, as every
page thereof proves, at the extraordinarily high rate of
6 shillings per hide.

Such, then, was one of those documents which at the
date of Domesday may be presumed to have existed in
plurality, and for every settled County in the kingdom,
and which the Domesday Commissioners had doubtless
in every circuit at their service.

A comparison between three or four English Counties
in the matter of statistical phenomena will here be oppor-
tune, though we do not at present attempt to account
for the variations.

4 NOTES ON DOMESDAY.

To begin with Dorset — its Hundreds, thirty-nine in
number, are all paraded and scrutinized in the Record
of 1084. They exhaust the whole geldable area of the
County. The Domesday of Dorset makes incidental
mention of only two Hundreds, and to one of those it
gives a name different from the name which had been
adopted in the previous Inquisition, though the district
indicated is clearly identical in both Records. The Prae-
Domesday Hundreds of Dorset are represented, many
of them in name and area, and all of them in essence, by
the divisions of the present day. The Dorset Domesday
adopts a local nomenclature derived largely from streams
and rivers. No less than thirty-five different estates
are registered, for instance, under the single name of
Winterburne ; yet from other indicia of the Record, and
from later evidence, the site of each of these scattered
Winterburnes may proximately be determined. Again,
the Dorsetshire of the nineteenth century is found to
be precisely conterminous with the Dorsetshire of 1084
and 1086.

Much the same may be said of Wiltshire. Its Inquest
of 1084 is also preserved. Its Hundreds, all enumerated
in the Inquest, are none of them named in Domesday.
We are assured, on better authority than our own, 1 that
its external boundaries have remained unchanged during
the eight centuries already indicated.

Of a third county, Lincolnshire, more will be said
anon ; but here merely that its Inquest of 1084 has not
been preserved ; that its Domesday divisions are very
insufficiently marked by the Record, but may be deter-
mined by industrious research ; that they are very
closely represented by the divisions of the present day,
and that as a whole, and with the exception of incalcu-
lable changes of foreshore, the boundaries of the County
are what they were at the date of Domesday.

Lastly, with regard to Shropshire, its Domesday has no
Inquest nor other adventitious illustration of the text ;

1 " Gleanings from the Wiltshire Domesday," by the Eev. W. H.
Jones, Vicar of Bradford-on-Avon,

NOTES ON DOMESDAY. 5

but its Domesday is better executed, and is more sufficient
of itself, than the Domesday of any of the three counties
above-mentioned. The clerks who executed the Shrop-
shire Domesday rubricated the appropriate Hundreds
with scrupulous care, the results of which we shall
advert to presently. But, on the other hand, the area
of Shropshire came to be largely altered in the time of
King Henry I. ; the very names of Hundreds and their
Domesday contents were, with one exception (that of
Condover), metamorphosised and re-distributed. There
have been further and later changes — changes of less
importance to the Archaeologist, because more easily
traced and accounted for.

To return to Dorset — the tendency of the Domesday
Commission which visited that County was somewhat
to increase the geldable area recorded in the Inquest of
1084 ; but, in assessments of the Danegeld subsequent
to Domesday, we find that the assessors rather relied on
the compacter Kecords of an earlier date than troubled
themselves with any analysis or synopsis of Domesday
lights. This will appear by the following statistics : —

The Dorset Inquest of 1084 records a hid age, that is,
a geldable area, of 2296f hides for the whole 39 Hun-
dreds which went to compose the County. The details
of this report, when examined, suggest a small margin
of clerical or arithmetical error, which, if allowed for,
would give 2301-^ hides as the geldable area in question.
The Domesday Commissioners for Dorset, their work
being analysed, are presumed to have omitted one or
two large manors from their Survey; but still they
found the area of geldable estates, which did not escape
survey, to be 231 3f hides. But for the oversight their
view would probably have amounted to this, that the
report of 1084 was deficient in details to the extent
not merely of 17 hides, but of upwards of 30 hides.

For the year 1130, forty-four years after Domesday,
we have record of another assessment of the Danegeld
in Dorset. In this instance the Sheriff accounted of
the geldable area of the County as of 2282^ hides — an

6 NOTES ON DOMESDAY.

astonishing proximity to, and yet a declination from,
the estimate of 1084. The assessment in this case was
at the rate of 2 shillings per hide.

Twenty-six years later, the interval embracing 15
years of fiscal disorganization and civil anarchy, the
Danegeld was again assessed on Dorsetshire. In the
second year of Henry Fitz Empress, the year 1156, the
geldable area was exactly as it had been in 1130, viz.,
2282^ hides, and the assessment was again at the rate
of 2 shillings per hide.

A word now as to the accuracy or inaccuracy which
may be imputed to the fiscal officers and Domesday
Surveyors of William the Conqueror, when we test their
estimates of the areal contents of Counties by the more
scientific ascertainments of the present century.

Unfortunately, Shropshire cannot conveniently, nor
without undue prolixity, be brought under this compa-
rison ; for its boundaries*are by no means the same with
those contemplated by the Domesday Committee, nor
yet with those which obtained in the time of the second
Henry.

Of Dorsetshire we may speak with confidence and
precision. We must add something, gathered solely
from Domesday, to the Inquisitional hidage of 1084,
before we can say what was the then estimate of the
whole contents of a county : in other words, we must
add to geldable area that which was non-geldable by
immemorial prescription. In Dorset there were 45
hides of estate annexed to Boroughs, and Extra-hun-
dredal, which were not touched or approached by the
Inquest of 1084. There was also the Carucatage of
non-hidated and non-geldable lands belonging to the
Crown, as Vetus Dominium, to the Bishop of Sarum,
and to th^ Abbot of Glastonbury. We may estimate
this carucatage, where not expressly measured by Caru-
catae, according to the number of Teams (carucse)
employed. By this method we get in Dorset a Total
of privileged estate to the extent of 264^ carucates;
and a carucate, being in fact an unassessable hide, was,

NOTES ON DOMESDAY. 7

as a thing of conventional understanding, nearly co-
extensive with a Hide. The total area of Dorset, at
the date of 1084-6, may be formulated, then, as follows :
2296f hides + 45 hides + 264^ earucates = 2606£ hides.
The total area- of Dorset at the present day is computed
to be 627,265 statute acres. This gives 240§ acres as
the Dorset proportion for the Domesday Hide.

A word now of comparison between Dorset and
the distant and very dissimilar County of Lincoln.
For Lincolnshire the Inquest of 1084 is not preserved.
Domesday, in its Survey of Lincolnshire, estimates
extent and geldability according to the Carucate and
the Bovate, not according to the hide and the virgate.
The hide is never mentioned ; but the Carucate of Lin-
colnshire was the same index of geldable capacity as was
the Hide of Dorset.

Lincolnshire, at the date of Domesday, was divided,
as now, into three great provinces, viz., Lindsey (sub-
divided into' 3 Ridings, or, more minutely, into 19
Wapentacs), Ketsteven (subdivided into 11 Wapentacs),
and Hoyland (subdivided into 3 Wapentacs). Two of
these . Provinces, Lindsey and Hoyland, will seem from
what follows to have been at the date of Domesday in
an abnormal and unreclaimed condition. Ketsteven,
however, may be computed from Domesday to have con-
tained 1892f Carucates, which, being compared with
modern acreage, gives about 244 acres to the Carucate.
The number of acres representing the Lindsey Carucate
is more than 500 ; the number representing the Carucate
of Hoyland is more than 1000. Thus we get an indica-
tion from Domesday of the comparative wealth and pro-
sperity of the three provinces of Lincolnshire, and we note
that the most depreciated districts were those of the
seaboard.

To the curious phenomenon that the Carucate of
Ketsteven and the Hide of Dorset should be repre-
sented by a modern acreage so nearly co-equal, viz., by
241 and by 244 acres respectively, we may now
add what we formerly concluded from widely different

8 NOTES ON DOMESDAY.

data, viz., that the Domesday hide of Shropshire
"probably equalled something more than 240 statute
acres." x

We now pass to consider those other facilities besides,
pre-exi^tent and accurate Records, which the Domesday
Commissioners had or may have had in the furtherance
of their work. It is probable generally, as it is proved
incidentally, that, whatever county they were visiting
the Curia Comitates, the archetype of the Grand Jury
of modern times, sat in permanence as their assessors —
ready to give, and, as we know, sometimes giving, its
verdict on points of doubt or high import. Whatever
Hundred or Wapentac happened to be under survey,
the Jury of that Hundred or Wapentac was also in
sessional aid of the Commissioners. Further the Owner
of, or the Bailiff of, or the Tenant of, or some person or
persons representing, each separate Manor of the said
Hundred or Wapentac was, or was expected to be, in
attendance, ready to give evidence as to the internal
condition of such Manor at the time being.

These facts are inferred from the text of the Record
itself; they are its internal evidence; they are merely
illustrated and confirmed by what is elsewhere said of
the Commissioners' proceedings, viz., that they " exam-
" ined whom they chose : such as Sheriffs, Barons, Reeves
" of Hundreds, Priests, Bailiffs, and even Villeins/'

Something shall now be said about the Domesday
Committees ; how many Corps of Commissioners were
appointed ; what amount of work was allotted to them
severally ; from what class of persons were the Commis-
sioners selected. On the first two points internal
evidence is our only guide ; on the third point, the only
scrap of evidence which we have is external, but it is
certainly exact and highly suggestive.

Sober critics have instructed us in later times that
the Iliad usually attributed to a certain Homer was the
work of a plurality of minds. This has been assumed
or ascertained by a comparative examination of different

1 Antiquities of Shropshire, xii 183.

KOTES ON DOMESDAY. " 9

portions of the extant text, and without much reference
to those less sober principles of criticism which commend
themselves to the heart rather than to the brain. We
confess that our sometime study of the Iliad did not
attain to the conclusiveness of the newer theory and
tests. But such tests are all-sufficient for the examina-
tion of a non-poetic, matter-of-fact, work like Domesday.
After much study we venture to conclude, from the
phraseology, the method, and othar characteristics of the
several Chapters which compose the Exchequer Domes-
day, that the whole work was accomplished by nine
Corps of Commissioners. The printed Edition has an
Index following the sequence of the Counties as origin-
ally arranged in the Manuscript Codex. This arrange-
ment, except in two instances, seems to have placed the
work of the respective corps in true juxtaposition. The
exceptions seem to be where two Counties have been
withdrawn from their respective circuits, and arranged
rather with a view to geographical consecutiveness. In
short, the Index places Oxfordshire between Bucking-
hamshire and Gloucestershire, and places Huntingdon-
shire between Cambridgeshire and Bedfordshire ; just as
a Map might suggest in both cases. Yet, from internal
evidence, we may be sure that Oxfordshire was not sur-
veyed by the same Committee as that which visited
Buckinghamshire, nor yet as that which visited Glouces-
tershire. We may be equally sure that the Surveyors
of Huntingdonshire were not the Surveyors of Cam-
bridgeshire and Bedfordshire. Oxfordshire we believe
to have been surveyed by the same Corps as surveyed
Northamptonshire, Leicestershire and Warwickshire.
Huntingdonshire we believe to have been surveyed by
the same Commissioners as those whose great department
was Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire and the
North. On the whole, we believe the following to have
been the Domesday Circuits of so many Corps of Com-
missioners ; —

Circuit I. — Kent, Sussex, Surrey, Hampshire (in-
cluding the Isle of Wight), Berkshire.

10

NOTES ON DOMESDAY.

Circuit

Circuit

Circuit IV.

Circuit
Circuit

Circuit VIL

Circuit VIIL-

II. — Wiltshire, Dorsetshire, Somersetshire,

Devonshire, Cornwall.
III. — Middlesex, Hertfordshire. Buckingham-
shire.

-Gloucestershire (including part of Mon-
mouthshire), Worcestershire, Hereford-
shire (including part of Wales).
V. — Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire.
VI . — Northamptonshire (including one-third
of Rutland), Leicestershire, Warwick-
shire, Oxfordshire.

■Staffordshire, Shropshire (including part
of Wales), Cheshire (including part of
Wales), South Lancashire.
-Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire (supple-
mented by two-thirds of Rutland),
Yorkshire (including Amunderness or
Mid-Lancashire, also North Lancashire,
Furness and part of Westmoreland)
Lincolnshire, Huntingdonshire.
Circuit IX. — Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk.

Of the nine Corps of Commissioners thus distinctively
employed, if we accept the only known case as an Index
of the eight unknown, we must conclude that each
corps consisted of four persons. The four who visited
Worcestershire and supposedly Gloucestershire and
Herefordshire, were Remigius de Fecamp, Bishop of
Lincoln, Walter Giffard, Henry de Ferrars, and Adam
Fitz Hubert (a Kentish Baron).

It is remarkable that of these four Magnates, plenti-
fully beneficed elsewhere, only one had any estates
within the Circuit indicated. This one was Henry de
Ferrars. His interest was not a prominent one ; but the
returns as to his three estates are particularly lucid and
plausible. We infer that it was not the policy of the
< Conqueror to appoint Commissioners to Circuits where
they were personally influential or largely interested.

Of the individuals composing the other groups of
Domesday Commissioners we know not even the names.

NOTES ON DOMESDAY. 11

Certain analogies suggest that each group was headed
by a Bishop. It is little better than a guess that
Wulstan, Bishop of Worcester, presided over the
Committee which visited Shropshire, Cheshire, and
Staffordshire. It is still more of a guess that Osmund,
Bishop of Sarum, previously Chancellor of England,
presided over the Committee which visited Lincolnshire
and its associated counties. 1

And now we turn to a little-explored but not less
interesting branch of our subject, viz., the mechanical
process which wrought the Great Survey and the
different stages of its accomplishment.

Each corps of Commissioners was attended by its
Clerks. Kemigius, Bishop of Lincoln, had with him when
in Eyre at Worcester, a Clerk and two Monks. Though
these attendants are ascribed, in the document from
which we quote, to the Bishop individually, they
probably worked in common with other Clerks for the
Committee of which he was chief. The Clerks of the
Survey inscribed their memoranda, whether of written
or oral testimony, under the direction of the Com-
missioners. They worked by the Hundred or in some
counties by the Wapentac specially under survey, not by
the Fief or Barony as the extant Codex might lead us
to suppose. In some instances the Commissioners were
cajoled or deceived, so that particular estates escaped
survey altogether. Thus in the survey of Hoyland
(Lincolnshire), Ingulfus, Abbot of Croyland, concealed
from the Commissioners all knowledge of the precinct
and demesne of that Abbey. He afterwards told
posterity that such feats were practicable, that the
Commissioners were to be ' treated with/ He seems to
have repented eventually, not of his dishonesty, but
probably of some inconvenience which he feared it might

1 It has further been ascertained, from Domesday itself, that the
Commissioner who led Circuit II (that which included Somerset,
Dorset and Wiltshire), was William, Bishop of Durham.

Proof of this will be furnished in the forthcoming treatise on the
Somerset Domesday.

12 KOTES ON DOMESDAY.

entail in respect of title. So Ingulfus made a purposed
visit to the Exchequer, ostensibly that he might
transcribe from the finished Domesday all that related
to the estates of his Abbey. He hints that his transcript
embodied a few alterations and additions. He left his
transcript to posterity, so that we can judge from the
document what these additions and alterations were.
We find that this Impostor forged a complete survey of
the home estate of Croyland Abbey, with which he
headed an otherwise unobjectionable precis of what he
found in Domesday. He did not, for probably he could
not, insert his forgery in the Exchequer Domesday, or
tamper with the genuine text. This digression shows
what indeed is patent from other testimony, that
Domesday was at a very early period open to the
inspection and transcription of influential parties.

But it happens that there are more than 30 Lincoln-
shire estates besides Croyland which are unrepresented
in the existing Codex of Domesday. We have examined
the Dorset Domesday, and do not suspect more than
two such omissions. The Shropshire Survey is still
more unimpeachable.

The reasons of the Lincolnshire omissions were
probably various, and whereas some of them had to do
with what we have termed the Mechanism of the
Survey, we should here notice them.

We may reckon perhaps twenty and more of these
Lincolnshire estates which altogether escaped the notice
of the Commissioners, or in other words were not
surveyed at all. This may have been by reason of the
insignificance of some estates, or by reason of
forgetfulness or inaccuracy, or confusion, or doubt on
the part of local jurors and witnesses, or of the Clerks
who indited their statements ; or it may have been that
the older documents used at the Survey were in some
respects imperfect! Other estates than the twenty
and more, above alluded to, may have escaped the
Commissioners' cognizance, by reason of local and
powerful influences. In this class we should be disposed

NOTES ON DOMESDAY. 13

to reckon the Croyland omission already spoken of, the
suppressed estates of Ansgot de Burwell, a favoured
Saxon, whose property is found greater and more intact
after Domesday than in Domesday, also certain estates
of Ivo Taillgebosc, the existing Sheriff and Minister, who
lorded it in Lincolnshire. Again there are omissions or
mis-statements as to lands of Koger the Poitevin, the
fact being that he was under escheat at the date of
Domesday ; and as to lands in Welle Wapentac where
Remigius, Bishop of Lincoln, then absent on another
circuit, was ordinarily supreme. In this last case, the
omission was of a quarter of the whole territory of the
Wapentac.

But there is a further case of omission in the extant
Domesday of Lincolnshire more remarkable than any of
the foregoing, in that it reveals more as to the
mechanism of the Survey. — Three Royal Manors are
absent from the Codex. One of them certainly, and
probably all, were duly surveyed, for the Survey of that
one, viz., Washingborough, is expressly referred to
under another Manor, as containing evidence which is
therefore not given under the second Manor. Here we
may suspect that a leaflet or rotulet of the Commission-
ers' work was lost before it reached the Exchequer, or
that it was destroyed when there. Some tenements in
Hill Wapentac are also absent from the Codex, but
their number and extent seem so uncertain as hardly
to supply an indication of another lost leaflet of the
Commissioners' work.

The Legati Regis, in their respective circuits, appear
to have had other duties than the mere Registration of
every class of estate, with the tenure, adjuncts, contents,
and value thereof, past and present. The Legati held
and in most cases determined Placita, that is, settled
many coeval questions of title, l registered doubts and

1 This was written, either under a misconstruction of particular
passages in Domesday, or else after an insufficient examination of the
Record as a whole. My present conviction is that the Legati never
tried questions of title, unless specially directed by the Crown to do

14 NOTES ON DOMESDAY.

evidence where they did not decide, and in one or two
seeming instances left the decision to the . King. These
Placita-Rolls are generally lost, but wherever lost we
may presume that their more important contents have
been incorporated in the Domesday Register ; — in the
Register of the particular county and estate where they
were held, and which they concerned. In case of three
Counties only, those Counties being all in the same
Circuit, have these Placita Rolls been preserved,
distinctively preserved, independently of the ordinary
Register. They are entitled " Clamores," the Clamores
of Lincolnshire, of Yorkshire, of Huntingdonshira They
are documents of peculiar interest, giving us scraps of
history, glimpses of social matters, and fragments of
Anglo-Norman custom and law, for which we may look
in vain in the more statistical Register.

In case of the three Eastern Counties there are
appendices attached to the Territorial Survey of each.
These appendices, as containing notices of all sorts of
fictitious title, of trespasses, and malversation of office
among the Normans themselves, are called Invasiones.
They have no indication of having been Placita, that is
of having been tried by the Domesday Commissioners.
They are rather memoranda of grievances, complaints
and representations which reached the Commissioners'
ears. So far as they are analogous to, so far they are non-
identical with, the Clamores of other Counties. They
are less allusive than the Clamores to matters of
collateral interest ; and as to throwing light on territorial
boundaries and divisions, they are most deficient on points
where the Clamores are most instructive.

In our account, or presumed account, of the mechanical
formation of Domesday we have already reached the
point where the loose, leaflets or rotulets inscribed in

so. Their function, in cases of doubtful title, was to state all
sides of a question, not to decide.

On this ground the title of Liber Judicialis, sometimes applied to
Domesday, seems inappropriate (see Domesday Studies, Somerset,
p. 7).

NOTES ON DOMESDAY. 15

the provinces were sent up to be digested and transcribed
in the Scriptorium of the Exchequer. Parenthetically
we should observe here that not a single fragment of
these original drafts is known to be in existence. They
were probably extant in the reign of Henry II. (1154-
1189) for then a copy of some of them relating to
Cambridgeshire is supposed, from the handwriting, to
have been taken. This copy has been printed under
the Title of Liber Eliensis. We have not ourselves
consulted the Manuscript, and we must be content to
say that in form, substance, and sequence, the several
entries were an intended and probably close reproduction
of the notes originally taken by the Domesday
Commissioners.

Now we pass, or imagine ourselves to pass, to the
early months of the year 1086, and to the Scriptorium
of the Koyal Exchequer. Some of the whilom
Commissioners are perhaps present to direct the progress
of a work only half as yet completed. There is a staff
of Clerks of different grades, most of them holding
permanent office in the Exchequer, few of them the
same Clerks as those who had worked in the Provinces.
The Clerks, for instance, who had operated in the
Eastern Counties are nearly all missing. Their work
was of an inferior type, and they had adopted in their
MSS. an unwonted and defective system of verbal
contraction. Their successors, the transcribing Clerks
oi the Exchequer, instead of improving this department
of the provincial work, have misunderstood and mis-
represented it generally.

Imperial orders have gone forth that the coming
Codex, the Domesday that is to outlive centuries, is to
be completed before Easter (April 5 in that year), when
King William himself expects to receive it in his Court
and Palace of Winchester. The Codex is not to be a
mere copy of the Country notes. Their arrangement is
to be altered entirely ; the details of Manorial live-stock
are to be omitted in all cases except that of the three
Eastern Counties : many surnames of sub-tenants, given

16 NOTES ON DOMESDAY.

in full on the country notes, may be omitted in the
Transcript : the Counties are to be surveyed in the
Codex, not according to their divisions of Hundreds, or
of Wapentacs, or of Hidings, but according to Tenure,
according to their divisions into Fiefs and Baronies.
The task hereby thrown on the Exchequer Clerks thus
becomes a task not of mere manual labour and imitative
accuracy, but a task requiring intellect ; — intellect, clear,
well-balanced, apprehensive, comprehensive, and trained
withal.

The result, as to arrangement, is in certain instances
just what might have been expected from some
haste of process. It is assigned, we will instance,
to a Clerk employed with the Lincolnshire survey,
to collect and transcribe from the several Rolls
of Wapentacs or Ridings the manorial constituents
of Earl Alan's Fief. He exhausts, as he thinks,
one or two Rotulets, and then turns to those of
another Riding or Wapentac to search for more of Earl
Alan's Manors. Ere he has transcribed these he finds
that there are other entries on the Rotulets first
examined, and perhaps other Rotulets bearing on the
particular Riding with which he had started, and all
relevant to Earl Alan's estate. To these, having
previously missed them, he is now obliged to revert.
Of such reversions or retrogressions, so subversive of
topographical sequence, there are at least eight instances
in the codification of this one Lincolnshire Fief. The
same or a similar result attended the codification of all
the principal Fiefs of the same county. The County
Rotulets had not been kept together in due sequence,
or else the hurried Clerks were perpetually overlooking
entries which they ought to have seen. Another mark
of confusion, or hurry in the Lincolnshire Domesday is
that it is very partially rubricated with the appropriate
Ridings and Wapentacs. To atone for this the
Transcript Clerks have everywhere left spaces, evidently
for the postscriptive insertion of such Rubrics ; — spaces
which have never been filled.

NOTES ON DOMESDAY. 17

In respect of sequence, and though it does not give,
nor was ever intended to give, Rubrics of Hundreds, the
Dorsetshire Domesday is more true to the original
topographical survey than the Lincolnshire. The
Shropshire Domesday is faithfully and fully rubricated.
By this means the clerical irregularities of transcription
stand self-corrected on the Record, and we have been
able to trace, without extra toil and doubt, nearly every
Shropshire locality to its modern representative.
Imperfectly as some Transcript Clerks did their work of
re-arrangement, we cannot but commend the self-evident
accuracy of their text, the ingenious devices, and the
intelligent though quaint symbols, by which they
restored a degree of order to previous dislocations.

Another evidence of the confusion and doubt per-
vading the Lincolnshire department of transcript arose
in the then abnormal status of the territory of Rutland,
a status which, however intelligible to Clerks on circuit,
could not be appreciated by Transcribers at the
Exchequer. — Two-thirds of Rutland were reputed to be
in the county or at least in the Shrievalty of
Nottingham. These constituents of Rutland were
inserted with all due propriety by the transcribing
Clerks as part of Nottinghamshire. But the Clerks,
who were at work on the Lincolnshire notes of the
same Circuit, got hold of some of these Nottinghamshire
leaflets and unwittingly entered a number of Rutland
Manors redundantly, and not only that, but so as to
tend to the erroneous supposition that part of Rutland
was in the Shrievalty of Lincolnshire. Such repeti-
tions, but affecting single Manors only, are observable
elsewhere in Domesday. The transcribing Clerks seem
not to have checked the original notes with any
mark or sign that such and such a note had been
copied.

Against such errors and redundancies a very simple
but effective precaution seems to have been adopted by
some Clerk or Clerks employed on the Yorkshire notes.
Before transcription was commenced an Index was made

18 NOTES ON DOMESDAY.

of the loose notes of that County. This Index gave
the contents of each Wapentac or Liberty in abstract
under the appropriate title ; then the measure in caru-
cates and bovates of each item of estate; and lastly
(interlined) some hint or indication to whose Honour or
Fief each item belonged. This most clerkly device will
have saved the subsequent Transcribers much trouble
of roll-searching and a world of confusion in their actual
work. Taking account of any particular Fief, the Tran-
scriber had merely to run his eye over the Index of a
particular Wapentac or Hundred, where he would see
at a glance how many items he had to find or to look
for in the collective and several Rotulets of county
notes.

This work of intelligent Clerkship, or most part of
iti, still survives. It is placed next the Lincolnshire
" Clamores" in the printed folio of Domesday.

Another speciality of the Yorkshire Domesday is the
postscriptive Schedule of De Bruce's Barony copied
probably from a Royal Writ or Charter rather than from
Commissioners notes. "Hie est feodum Rodberti de
Bruis quod fuit datum postquam Liber de Wintonia
scriptus fuit" The Schedule, thus headed, reached
Winchester and was engrossed on two blank pages of
the Record, after the Clerks had digested, arranged,
and codified the results of the survey. A great part,
and perhaps the whole of the estates therein named, had
appeared in the previous survey under other conditions
of tenure. De Bruce, when the Commissioners were
in Eyre, had as yet acquired nothing in Yorkshire.
The admission of this postscript, as actual part of the
Domesday Record, indicates that De Bruce's feoffment
followed close on the Survey. So far as we can see, no
other postscript has since been admitted.

One more document, strictly connected with the
history and formation of Domesday, remains to be
noticed. It seems that other editions, beside that
preserved at the Royal Exchequer, were coevally made
of at least portions of the Commissioners' Note-Rolls.

NOTES ON DOMESDAY. 19

One such collection of extracts exists. It is called the
Exon Domesday. It is printed and bound up with the
Inquisicio Gheldi in one of the folios of the late Record
Commission.

It is possible that this work was at one time more
comprehensive that it now remains, and embodied a
complete Domesday of the five South- Western Counties.
If so it was with parallel probability made originally
for the uses of that district, and was deposited in the
Chapter House of Exeter for the convenience of
Inspectors. Similarly the idea arises that other Sections
of Domesday may have been likewise copied and
deposited in other quarters of the kingdom for
provincial uses.

But if the Exon Domesday was never more complete
than it now is, it will have been drawn up for some
person or persons, some Body Corporate, some fiscal or
judicial Officers of the Crown; in short for purposes among
which, if we are to judge by the arbitrary selection of
Fiefs embodied in the Record, none can be more plausibly
advocated than another. Argue, for instance, from the
place of deposit, that this Record was made for the use
of the hierarchy of Exeter Diocese, and we are at a loss
to conceive why it should have embraced the Lay-fief of
a Dorset or of a Somerset Baron. The better conclusion
is, then, that the Exon Domesday is but a fortuitously
preserved fragment of a once more voluminous whole.

Textually the Exon Domesday appears to have been
a copy, not a paraphrase or abridgment, of particular
clauses of the original notes, taken by the South-Western
Commissioners. But in arrangement according to Fiefs,
rather than according to topography, it follows the prin-
ciple of the Exchequer Domesday.. So, then, the idea
that it was compiled from the said notes, before they
had been sent to the Exchequer for re-arrangement and
digestion, will not hold. 1 Every way, and so far as it

1 1 have found reason to -withdraw from this conclusion. The Exon
Domesday was compiled independently of the Exchequer version, and
vice versa. But it is quite possible that the Exon compilation was
effected first (see Domesday Studies, Somerset, pp. 4 5).

<r

20 NOTES ON DOMESDAY.

goes, it is a most interesting document, giving us, like
the Liber Eliensis, a farther view of what the scope and
character of those original notes were, and, like the
Inquisicio Gheldi, retaining much of personal nomencla-
ture which in the Exchequer Domesday was suppressed
as immaterial. One illustration of this last remark
must suffice, though more might be added. In the
Kobertus and the Drogo and the Hugo of the Exchequer
Domesday holding under the Earl of Mortagne or under
William of Ewe, we should scarce be able, without the
Inquisicio Gheldi and the Exon Domesday, to detect
the undoubted progenitors of three Baronial Houses,
— to wit Beauchamp of Hach, and Montacute, and
Maltravers. The great Garter-King did not in his day
apprehend any of these identities, and, so far as we are
aware, the Historians of Somerset and Dorset only
glanced at one of the three as problematical.

And indeed it may summarily be said of a closer and
better instructed study of Domesday and its cognates,
that its results will often afford a link and often a
pedestal for some grand genealogy, will solve many a
doubt, and correct many a . misapprehension about the
national history of the period, will convict of prejudice,
falsehood, and slander the Monastic Annalists hitherto
most in repute, and will enable the student to slough
the credulity with which he has adopted the views of
those Philo-Saxon writers, who, relying on such
informants, have attempted to portray, clothe, and
illustrate historical features which they have only
succeeded in distorting.

WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

A KEY TO DOMESDAY,

EXEMPLIFIED BT
AN ANALYSIS AND DIGEST OF THE DORSET SURVEY.

Crown 4to, 20s. net

THE COURT HOUSEHOLD AND ITINERARY

OF KING HENRY II.

CONTAINING ALSO

The Chief Agents and Adversaries of the King in his
Government, Diplomacy, and Strategy.

Crown 4to, Cloth, 24s. net

DOMESDAY STUDIES:

AN ANALY8I8 AND DIQE8T OF THE 8OMER8ET SURVEY

(ACCORDING TO THE EXON CODEX),

AMD OF THE

SOMEKSET GHELD INQUEST OF a.d. 1084,

As collated with, and illustrated by, Domesday.

BT THE

REV. R. W. EYTON,

Late Rector of Ryton; author of "Antiquities of Shropshire" ; "Key to Domesday, an

Analysis and Digest of the Dorset Survey" etc.

In Two Vols, 4to, One of Text and One of Tables,
Price £2 12s. 6<L

London : REEVES & TURNER, 196, STRAND.

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